Page 27 of All These Beautiful Strangers
Uncle Hank gave me a little nod from the foldout table. “Hey there, Charlotte.”
“Hi, Uncle Hank,” I said.
“There’s a spot for you right next to Ryder,” Uncle Lonnie said, nodding toward the end of the couch. “Why don’t you take a seat and watch the game?”
I settled into the seat on the far end of the couch, near the wall.
“Hey, Ryder,” I said. “It’s been a while. You grew.”
The last time I had seen Ryder, he was five years old, short and scrawny, just a mop of blond curls. He had been a funny kid, this little ball of energy, always cracking jokes and making mischief. Now he was sprawling and lanky; he slouched on the couch and his long legs disappeared underneath the coffee table. He looked tired.
“Yeah,” Ryder said without taking his eyes off the TV. “Growth spurt.”
“Nice,” I said. “I’m still waiting for one of those myself.”
Ryder just nodded.
“Prepubescent teenagers, tough crowd,” Greyson said, leaning forward a bit and giving me a shrug.
“I’m not prepubescent, asshole,” Ryder said.
“Language,” Greyson said.
There was another controversial call in the game that got everyone riled up, and then Uncle Lonnie was asking Greyson about UConn’s lineup that year, and I sat quiet and forgotten. I felt like an alien, a stranger. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, so I tucked them into the crooks of my elbows. For the hundredth time since I’d walked through the door, I regretted coming here at all.
I glanced at the wood-paneled wall of the den, at all the picture frames that were sporadically lit up by the glare of the television. They were mostly pictures of Hank, Will, Lonnie, and my mother when they were younger. Hank as a lifeguard at the community pool; Will in his Marine Corps uniform at Parris Island; Lonnie on his skateboard; my mother standing on the podium next to a pool in some gymnasium, a “State Champion” sash around her shoulder, her hair still wet, beaming proudly at the camera. There were other pictures of my mother: In one, she had ice cream all over her face and she was laughing, her mouth open so wide it almost looked painful; in another, she was all dressed up for a high school dance in a scarlet dress, her hair pulled back. A young dark-haired man in a suit and tie had his arms around her, pulling her close.
My mother was the only girl; she grew up among a band of brothers. I thought this made her tough. I could tell from looking at the pictures that before she was a teenager, she was kind of a tomboy, always chasing after her brothers, trying to keep up, all skinned knees and dirty palms. When she got older, she became more feminine, with makeup and crop tops and the occasional dress. But I realized looking at these pictures that there had never been anything soft about my mother. That last summer that we spent together, I remembered her with her chin up, shoulders squared, as if she was always looking for a fight.
Around ten o’clock, we all piled into the kitchen around the table. There were too many of us to all fit in the room at once, and so some of us leaned in doorways or stood on tiptoes to see over the crowd from the den. My grandma pulled me to the front of the table. She put her arm around me to keep me there. She had baked a birthday cake for my mother and frosted it herself. “Happy Birthday, Grace,” it said in purple frosting, and two numbered candles, “4” and “3,” slouched in the frosting. Everyone sang a discordant chorus of “Happy Birthday,” with Lonnie crooning, “How old are you, how old are you, you look like a monkey, and you smell like a zoo,” at the end. And then they all looked at me, and my grandma whispered in my ear with her arm still around me, “Blow out the candles, Charlotte.”
As they looked at me, I knew they couldn’t help but see her. I leaned forward and took a deep breath to put out the candles, and I imagined my mother on a white-sand beach somewhere a world away, doing the exact same thing. Together, we took a breath, and together, we extinguished the flames.
Eight
Grace Calloway
August 4, 2007
8:48 p.m.
By the time I reached the water, it had started to rain. I walked in up to my waist, the sandy lake bottom giving way beneath my feet; I sank a little deeper with every step I took. The water was still lukewarm, even though the sun had disappeared. I took a deep breath, filled my lungs with air, and dove.
In high school, I could break a minute in the hundred-meter breaststroke. I’d always been a natural swimmer; I felt a strange kinship with the water, which was one reason it was so shocking when my boyfriend Jake drowned in a cold ravine up in northern New Hampshire.
When I heard the news, I didn’t say much. Death doesn’t make any sense when you’re sixteen. Death doesn’t make any sense when you’re older either. It just becomes a familiar stranger, a presence you’ve grown used to. But when you’re sixteen, you’re stubborn enough to demand answers. Death is a dark abyss that you shout down into. You throw rocks into its belly and listen for the echo, trying to figure out its dimensions. But there isn’t any knowing.
The next week at school I skipped fifth-period econ and snuck into the high school pool. On the bleachers, I stripped down to my underwear and I jumped into the deep end. I let myself sink, down and down and down.
I wanted to know what it felt like. My heart beat like a drum in my ears. I held my breath until I grew light-headed and my lungs screamed in my chest. I opened my eyes and they burned against the chlorine.
Now I was on top of the water, sprinting across the surface, my breath quick and hard. Bobbing in and out as I worked my way across the lake, out to the raft, and back to shore. Then back to the raft again, until I felt that sweet sense of utter exhaustion fill me. The cuts on my shoulder ached.
It wasn’t until my final lap that it happened. As I turned toward the house, the back porch light went out. I was suddenly sheathed in darkness, with only the gentle glow of the moon above me to illuminate my way. The moonlight caught along the water, the edges of the house, and I stared hard into the darkness, trying to make out if there was anything—anyone—there.
Don’t be silly, I told myself. Of course there wasn’t anyone there. We were all alone out there; there wasn’t anyone for miles. The back porch light must have burned out.
But still, some small primal part of me stood on edge. Suddenly, I heard a shrill shriek and my head jerked hard in the direction of the noise. It was coming from the backyard; I saw a dash of movement near the waterline. Something heavy, dark, lumbering. My gut twisted, and I sank down lower in the water, which suddenly felt colder. I shivered, tracking the moving object with my eyes, my heart hammering in my chest.
